Included here is a picture of Adam Smith from Scotland, where his Wealth of Nations was born, which I consider one of the most outstanding books ever written. It just so happens to be about economics and is the secret sauce to America’s great economy and why it has been at the top of the world. Many countries have many more people in them or even have more mineral resources. But for some reason, America has produced more economic wealth than any other place, anywhere, at any time. Even with all the big government restrictions that come from these socialist intrusions over the last century, significant government types have tried to ride the camel of productivity while at the same time imposing Marxism on them. America still outproduces the rest of the world in fundamental, economic value. So, the Wealth of Nations is an essential book written in 1776. But I also keep talking about Johan Norberg’s recent 2023 book, The Capitalist Manifesto, because it’s a really good book. Not necessarily from a conservative American perspective. But he’s from Sweden and he talks about IKEA a lot, but from a European liberalized mindset, he’s preaching the benefits of capitalism that I thought the left would never dare utter. And he’s doing it in an effort to save the concept of globalism from its massive failure of attaching itself to global communism. He sees, much the way Adam Smith tried to convince everyone, that capitalism is the best means of helping the most people, and in The Capitalist Manifesto, Norberg puts forth in a written and non-boring way, all the benefits capitalism has brought to the world over time and makes his case for everyone to get it for reference to the future of all global economies.

I was an economics major in college, but I was miserable. They were teaching Marxism, and I was far away from that vantage point, so it was painful, and through most of my adult life, I have worked in the opposite direction of all academics. I also found Adam Smith’s work to be my favorite, and I have rejected all forms of Keynesian economics from centralized authorities, which Smith also argued against. And over the years to feed my sentiments, I have enjoyed the work of Ayn Rand because as a Russian who lost everything to communism in her home country and had to flee to America to have a shot at a decent life, she understood Adam Smith too. But I was always the odd person over in the corner standing against the tide of globalism that we were all told was going to move in a noticeably communist direction, with China being the model that globalism created. So I can’t tell you how happy I am to have lived long enough to see that whole Marxist empire die in front of our faces. You could see the last gasp of it when Xi from China visited Biden in San Francisco late in 2023 for a kind of communist summit. Globalism was trying hard to show that they had reached the finish line. But due to populism yearning for Adam Smith capitalism, the water is flowing through their cupped hands fast, to the point where soon there will be nothing left to drink from. Looming in the background of all this political activity is the return from exile of President Trump, he has a vicious plan to end globalism as it has been proposed, and economic advocates like Johan Norberg see the writing on the wall, that if the world of liberals wish to save their hard work at establishing globalism, that they were going to have to throw the towel in and adapt capitalism, quickly.

I do read many books, about three of them the size of Norberg’s book a week.  But after I got through The Capitalist Manifesto about a third of the way, I considered it the most important book about economics since Adam Smith.  And I say that knowing that Norberg and I would likely see eye to eye on very little, politically.  But this book is a glaring admission that I know a lot of my old college professors would probably commit suicide over.  I would get so angry at their sheer stupidity that I would jump into just about every risky business proposal that came my way to shake off the stink of it all.  But I learned a lot in the process that is what we might say, unique to the present marketplace.  So, it all worked out in the end.  And I can see where Norberg is going even as the people on the political side of Norberg found Ayn Rand to be the incarnation of the Devil in all the details.  This was all a mainstream admission that the only way to save global markets was to adopt capitalism, purely and without much micromanagement, which is a massive statement from any economic circle.  It’s one that I have known about for decades, and it cost me much trouble to be on the side of pure markets while the rest of the world was moving toward various degrees of Marxism, from the stock market to the making of plastic baseballs in China. 

So, boys and girls, this is the question of the century, the answer all wrapped up into one, and the reason that Norberg published his book at this particular time.  What happens in 2024 and 2025 and beyond economically?  Norberg is not a populist, and he is not a fan of President Trump.  Yet, Trump is the leader of the political world, all over the world, despite all these attempts by globalists to keep their dead duck alive by trying to destroy Trump.  And revenge is coming once he is president again, and the last threads of globalism are as good as gone.  The entire plot of the World Economic Forum and their paper tiger of China will disappear.  That’s why Xi met with Biden.  They all know it’s over.  National capitalism will have to make a massive comeback, which will impact all the global markets attached to communism, which will be allowed to die on the vine to separate itself from the market flow of America.  That is where America is heading; for a while, we will close our borders and let the rest of the world rot on the last vestiges of globalism as envisioned by Tragedy and Hope (the book).  And if the world wants to survive, it will have to start thinking like Norberg and, fundamentally, getting to know Adam Smith better.  The Karl Marx experiment driven by all the Masonic lodges was a massive failure, and now people like Johan Norberg must fess up to it, which makes his book, The Capitalist Manifesto, the most important book of our time.  I can’t recommend it enough because it is the roadmap for the rest of this century.  And it all starts with what Trump will do in America once he’s reelected.  And the world struggles to catch up, which will be very hard for them.  But do, they must, if they want to survive the world that is coming. 

Rich Hoffman